U.S.–RUSSIAN NUCLEAR COOPERATION AND THE CTBT

Post-Cold War “lab-to-lab” collaborations on unclassified scientific issues between U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons laboratories set the stage for bilateral cooperation in materials control and other nuclear areas. They also became the major element in a cooperative process initiated by a Presidential Decision Directive to ensure Russia's compliance with the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty. These collaborations have always been highly favored by leaders of the Russian nuclear weapons complex—the same leaders who oversee Russia's participation in various government-to-government programs. This article reviews these collaborations and examines the possibility that U.S. rebuffs of Russian proposals and the U.S. failure to keep promises of expanded collaboration could contribute to Russia's reluctance in major programs and even lead to a return to nuclear testing by Russia. The author argues that a renewed U.S. commitment to the process should be an immediate goal of the Obama administration and is an essential step in re-engaging Russia to solve the nuclear problems remaining from the Cold War. Steps for doing so are recommended.     

VISIONS OF FISSION

For many years, non-nuclear weapons states have sought binding commitments from nuclear armed states that they would not be the victim of either the threat or use of nuclear weapons—so-called negative security assurances (NSAs). The nuclear weapon states have traditionally resisted granting such unconditional NSAs. Recent U.S. efforts to use nuclear deterrence against the acquisition and use by other states of chemical, biological and radiological weapons, however, have further exacerbated this divide. This article analyzes the historical development of NSAs and contrasts U.S. commitments not to use nuclear weapons with the empirical realities of current U.S. nuclear weapons employment doctrines. The authors conclude that NSAs are most likely to be issued as unilateral declarations and that such pledges are the worst possible manner in which to handle the issue of security assurance.     

UNDER THE RADAR?

Missile Contagion: Cruise Missile Proliferation and the Threat to International Security, by Dennis M. Gormley. Praeger Security International, 2008. 272 pages, $54.95.     

THE HEALTH OF THE NUCLEAR NONPROLIFERATION REGIME

How do we assess the health of international regimes? Many analysts have insisted recently that the nuclear nonproliferation regime is in urgent need of repair or that it should even be discarded because of its supposed ineffectiveness. However, it is essential that statements about the regime being in crisis be scrutinized for veracity and utility. While the spread of nuclear weapons poses an undeniable and serious threat to international security, a mistaken crisis mentality with respect to the regime could lead to rash attempts to alter it in unnecessary or ineffective ways or, at worst, to discard it completely. This paper returns to a theoretical framework that differentiates regimes, across both issue areas and time, to provide a more specified evaluation of regime health. By disaggregating the nuclear nonproliferation regime and assessing the individual and interactive health of multiple dimensions, a number of dimension-specific, regime-strengthening policy recommendations emerge.     

An Analysis of the Threat of Malicious Chemical Use by Nonstate Actors: Questioning the State-based Approach to Chemical Nonproliferation

ABSTRACT

This study seeks to evaluate the threat of malicious chemical use by non-state actors. It finds that non-state actors have primarily turned to ready-to-use crude chemical weapons (CW) instead of traditional CW agents. Interestingly, the worst crude CW attacks have been more destructive than those employing traditional CW. Scenarios for catastrophic consequences exist, but chemical attacks have typically been used to accomplish tactical goals, which leverage psychological and economic impacts. Therefore, successful efforts to counter CW proliferation by non-state actors must be substantially different from those targeting states.     

Reading the Riot Act: Toward a More Comprehensive Ban on Chemical Weapons

ABSTRACT

The recent use of chemicals in warfare in Syria and Iraq illustrates that, despite the important work of the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), the world has not yet been totally successful in stopping the use of indiscriminate toxic agents in conflicts, either by states or non-state actors. Michael Crowley's excellent and timely new book, Chemical Control, analyzes the use of “riot control agents” (RCAs) and “incapacitating chemical agents” (ICAs), including launch and dispersal systems, by police, paramilitary, and military forces over the last decades and raises the challenging question about where the red line might be drawn between banned and permitted uses of chemicals. He discusses this problem not only in the context of the CWC, which allows use of RCAs for civilian riot control, but also in the context of international law, human rights, and criminal justice, including the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention and other disarmament and abolition regimes. He proposes a “holistic, three-stage approach” to addressing this issue “for effective regulation or prohibition of the weapon or weapon-related technology of concern.” As we approach the global abolition of a whole class of weapons of mass destruction in the next decade or even sooner, Chemical Control is helpful in better understanding and solving the dilemma of what's actually banned or permitted under international law, and precluding states undermining the chemical weapons ban.